Naz Baloch: Biography, Education, Family and Political Journey from the PTI to the PPP (2026)

Who is Naz Baloch?

Here is what makes her unusual. In Pakistan, the children of political families usually join the family’s party. Naz Baloch did the opposite.

Her father was a well-known figure of the Pakistan Peoples Party in Karachi. When she entered politics in 2011, she walked past the family’s door and joined its rival, Imran Khan’s PTI. Six years later she walked back.

She is also unusual in another way. She is a woman from the Baloch community of Karachi, where few women take part in public politics, and in 2013 she fought a general seat in one of the city’s toughest constituencies.

Naz Baloch chose her own party before she accepted her family’s. That detour through the PTI tells you a good deal about what drew young Pakistanis to Imran Khan in 2011, and what pushed some of them away.

Family and background

She belongs to Karachi. Her father, Abdullah Baloch, was a senior figure of the Pakistan Peoples Party in the city.

Her family is ethnically Baloch. This needs a word of explanation, because Karachi is not in Balochistan.

The Baloch of Karachi

Baloch families have lived in Karachi for generations, since long before Pakistan was created. They are concentrated in the old neighbourhoods of the city: Lyari, Golimar, Malir and the fishing villages along the coast.

These neighbourhoods have been loyal to the PPP since the party was founded in 1967. Lyari in particular is called the party’s fortress in Karachi. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto both drew their biggest city crowds there.

So a daughter of a PPP family from this community was expected to belong to the PPP. That she did not, at first, was noticed.

Her public biography says she is the only woman in her family to have taken part in party politics.

Education

She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from St Joseph’s College, one of Karachi’s oldest colleges for women.

Joining the PTI, 2011

She joined the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in August 2011, a few months after her marriage. She turned down the option of joining her family’s party.

The timing matters. That was the year the PTI took off. In October 2011 Imran Khan held a huge rally in Lahore, and another followed in Karachi in December. Educated young people in the cities, many of whom had never voted, poured into the party.

They were drawn by a simple message: the two old parties, the PPP and the PML-N, had taken turns in power for decades and had both failed. A new party, led by a man with no dynasty behind him, would be different.

For a young woman from a PPP household, joining the PTI was a way of saying that she agreed.

She rose quickly. She became one of the party’s best-known faces in Karachi and held senior party posts.

2013: the only woman on the ballot

In the general election of May 2013 the PTI gave her a ticket for the National Assembly from NA-240, a constituency in the west of Karachi.

She did not win. But for a first-time candidate from a party that had barely existed in the city five years earlier, second place was a strong result.

It was part of a wider surprise. In 2013 the PTI won more votes in Karachi than anyone had predicted and became the second-largest party in a city long dominated by the MQM.

Why so few women stand

Her position as the only woman in the race was typical of the time.

Pakistan sets aside seats for women in its assemblies. But on the general seats, where candidates must win a constituency, women are rare. In 2013 only a few dozen women across the whole country were given tickets by the major parties for National Assembly general seats.

There are several reasons.

• Cost. A campaign in a city seat costs a great deal, and parties prefer candidates who can pay for it.
• Custom. In many communities a woman going door to door, or addressing a crowd of men, is still frowned upon.
• Safety. Karachi in 2013 was violent. Candidates and workers were killed during the campaign.
• Party habit. Leaders assume that reserved seats are “for women” and general seats are “for men”.

Since 2017 the law has required every party to give at least five per cent of its general-seat tickets to women. The rule has raised the numbers a little, though parties often meet it by fielding women in seats they expect to lose.

Leaving the PTI, 2017

On 16 July 2017 she announced that she was leaving the PTI and joining the Pakistan Peoples Party.

By then the PTI had changed. To win power, it had opened its doors to established politicians from the old parties, the so-called “electables”. Many early members felt pushed aside. Several well-known women left the party around the same time, some of them complaining that women workers were not given a voice.

For her, the move was also a homecoming. The PPP’s chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was trying to bring a new generation into the party, and a young, well-known woman from a loyal Karachi family fitted that plan.

In the National Assembly

After the general election of 2018 she entered the National Assembly on a PPP seat. She was returned again in 2024 and took the oath on 29 February 2024.

Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change

During the coalition government of 2022 and 2023, in which the PPP was a partner, she served as Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change. She worked alongside the minister, Senator Sherry Rehman, who was also from the PPP.

A parliamentary secretary answers questions in the house on the ministry’s behalf and helps manage its business in Parliament.

It was an eventful time to hold the post. In the summer of 2022 floods covered about a third of the country. That November she was part of Pakistan’s team at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, where countries agreed for the first time to set up a fund for the loss and damage caused by climate change.

Committees

Most of a member’s real work is done in committees. Her public biography lists three.

A committee can call ministers and officials before it, ask for records and send recommendations to the house.

The human rights committee has the widest brief of the three. In recent years such committees have looked into the treatment of prisoners, missing persons, violence against women and children, and the conditions of bonded workers on farms and at brick kilns. Their recommendations do not bind the government, but ministries are expected to reply to them in writing, and the replies go on the public record.

International meetings

She has represented Pakistan at several meetings abroad.

• COP27, the United Nations climate summit, in Egypt in 2022.
• The Internet Governance Forum in Poland, a United Nations meeting on how the internet should be run.
• A commercial law programme run by the United States government, in 2021.

Her public biography says she spoke at these meetings on climate finance, on digital governance and on resilience.

What is the Internet Governance Forum?

It is a yearly meeting, held under the United Nations, where governments, technology companies, researchers and campaigners discuss how the internet should be run. It passes no laws. Its value is that people who rarely sit in the same room, such as ministers and privacy activists, hear one another out.

For a country like Pakistan the questions are practical ones. How can more people, especially women and those in villages, get online? Who should decide what is taken down from social media? How should personal data be protected? Pakistan’s Parliament has been wrestling with all three, and members who have sat through such meetings tend to ask better questions when the bills arrive.

Climate and Sindh

Her interest in climate policy has a local edge. Sindh, her province, suffered more than any other in the floods of 2022. Whole districts on the right bank of the Indus stayed under water for months. Millions of people lost houses, crops and animals.

Karachi faces its own dangers: heatwaves that have killed hundreds in a single week, floods in the monsoon when drains overflow, and a coastline where the sea is slowly advancing. A member from Karachi does not have to look far for reasons to care about the subject.

How Sindh’s reserved seats are filled

The sixty seats for women in the National Assembly are divided among the provinces by population.

Each party’s share of Sindh’s fourteen depends on how many of the province’s general seats it wins. The PPP, which wins most of them, takes most of the women’s seats too.

Before the election the party gives the Election Commission a ranked list of names. A place near the top of that list is, in effect, a guaranteed seat. The party’s leadership decides the order, weighing loyalty, ability, the need to represent different districts and communities, and each woman’s standing in the party.

Why young politicians left the old parties, and why some returned

Her journey was shared by a generation.

Around 2011 many young, educated Pakistanis felt that the two established parties belonged to their parents. Those parties were led by families, and promotion inside them depended on patronage. The PTI offered something else: a party with internal elections, a leader with no dynasty and a promise of merit.

Some of what was promised did not last. As the PTI grew, it too came to depend on wealthy candidates and on the leader’s inner circle. Its experiment with internal elections ended in quarrels. A number of early members concluded that it had become much like the parties it had set out to replace.

For those who left, the old parties had meanwhile changed a little. Both had passed, or were passing, to a younger generation of leaders who wanted fresh faces around them. Returning no longer felt like surrender.

Whether that reading is fair to the PTI is a matter of opinion. But it explains how the same person could sincerely choose one party in 2011 and another in 2017.

The PPP in Karachi

To judge her place in the party, it helps to know the PPP’s odd position in its own province.

The PPP has governed Sindh without a break since 2008, yet for most of that time it has won only a handful of Karachi’s seats. Its critics in the city accuse it of neglecting Karachi. The party has been trying to change this, and in 2023 it took the mayor’s office for the first time.

A Karachi-born, Urdu- and English-speaking member with roots in the Baloch community is useful to that effort.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters describe her as articulate, well prepared and independent-minded. They say she proved herself in a hard general-seat fight before she ever accepted a reserved seat, and that her interest in climate and digital policy is serious.

Critics make a few points. PTI supporters say she gave up on the party a year before it won and went back to the comfort of her family’s party. Some say she returned to exactly the kind of family-based politics she had once rejected. And critics of reserved seats note that she now sits in the assembly through the party’s list.

Each view has merit. People change parties for mixed reasons, and hers were probably mixed too. But it is fair to add that when she left the PTI in 2017 it was on the rise, so the move was no easy path to office.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Naz Baloch at a glance

Why her story matters

• It shows the pull the PTI once had. In 2011 it could draw the daughter of a PPP family away from her own house.
• It shows why some early members left. The party that came to power in 2018 was not quite the party they had joined.
• It shows how few women fight general seats, and what it takes to do so in a city like Karachi.

To see how the assembly and its committees work, read our explainer on the National Assembly and our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• National Assembly of Pakistan, member profile: Ms. Naz Baloch — read on 8 October 2026.
• Wikipedia, “Naz Baloch” — biography as last edited on 17 July 2026.
• PakVoter, profile of Naz Baloch — on her move to the PPP and the 2018 election.
• The Express Tribune, 2013 report on her candidacy in NA-240 — April 2013.
• Election Commission of Pakistan — for the rule on tickets for women candidates.